It's Nice to Remember: An Interview with Lina M and Doon H by Cal
by Tsuppi
Summary: DxL - 5 chapters - [Implied and explicit sex: Mature-read at your discretion] - 'I knew-the moment we locked eyes in my eighteenth year of life, that summer, I knew.' - A son asks to weave the history of a very special coupling via 'literary interview.' This is the product. - COMPLETE!
1. What and Why

1. What and Why  
LINA

**I.  
****What**

Our escape and years of time in the sun had unravelled him-ruffled his hair, undone the buttons of his too-small jacket, cracked and crushed his voice into a round and deep huff, baked his skin golden-but still. Still the moments of tidiness and his old disturbingly-earnest self, and words... strange words tug at my lips, unspoke.

When did this all start? Noticing, seeing, divining (really, agonizing).

I've lost all my marbles, or the heat's doing something funky, does what it does to dogs that pant.

(I know what I want.)

-o-

**II.  
****And**

It's indecent!

I guess, ever since we started... whatever it is we've started... I've felt looser. Different. I stop sometimes in the middle of a flight of thought that I don't remember starting, and it's always about the randomest things. I got very annoyed and very worried very quickly, as did my co-workers, when the thing finally came to their attention: they're madly in love!

Of course we are. But I've never acted this way. The last love of my life-with a Puck-like man with dark skin who lived too far away and was too busy to notice me-felt something like getting knocked down by a stampede of horses over and over. This was new. It felt like I had eaten something sweet that had a deep after-taste, except that whatever I had eaten was also a parasite and was taking over my brain, slowly.

I guess I'll have to adjust. I haven't ever been busier with my work. But all I want to do is be with him.

I have to think about this. Feel it out.

-o-

**III.  
****Why**

It's just too good to give it up.


	2. Fiercely

2. Fiercely  
LINA

**I.**

How do you quantify a warm hug? A solicitous glance? The concerned cluck of an elder who knows better? How do you quantify that cool stillness of a living room in which you lie-you, fingering blistering hot thermoses pressed against your belly to let your upset stomach settle down? Or the feel of your mother's fingers as she seeks for your temperature?

I know. You can taste it. But only when it's been taken from you-only then, with the plate returned to the kitchen and thrown down the garbage chute. They were thrown into the hungry mouth where the borders of our town and the vast Unknown Regions met: those two lips of craggy hard rock, hanging between them something yet unknown. Something you cannot taste. Yet.

I dream about that nightmare place every so often, even though I've made my peace with Ember long ago, from the moment we decided to take what we could amidst the abandonment of our city. I sit up in bed usually, and Doon is awake. He catches my arm and tells me to calm down. 'What was it?' He'd ask. And I'd say nothing, too sick with terror or stunned with the relief of reality existing here, now. He'd tell me what I had been murmuring in my sleep: 'Not yet.'

Embarrassing.

-o-

**II.**

But then sometimes, sometimes... a very few times, actually, that dream of the house above the shop comes to me, in the night….

I am home from school, the door opening to the sounds of frying dinner. The echoing babble of a daughter- and mother-in-law bounces about the legs of the dinner table and the chairs, the sofa, the cabinets. And then there she is to greet me, only her head turned, her spine in profile a perfect S. Mother. Her smile is a smile with a capital S, as well. Coming in there is my grandmother, also to greet me. And in my dreams her son, my father, materializes from somewhere in the house, too, and in the rush of Welcome homes and I'm backs and hugs and His and Hellos, I can taste it. I taste it and am embraced by this unquantifiable thing that I know no one can live without, and it is warm. They tell me to Go and play as they settle back to their tasks, and I-my dream self-she turns, walks away with her back to them and next I turn, I am nineteen years old and sitting up in bed. My little sister who I raised with the flagging aid of my aging grandmother-and then, for a little while, all alone-is sleeping beside me in this safe place to which our people have egressed, to which all our efforts have brought us both against all odds and according to instruction all at once. And-

I cry in my bed whenever this dream comes.

I don't know.

-o-

**III.**

Doon asked me once what the matter was, the first time he saw me this way. Wanting to understand. Wanting so hard. And that time I told him everything I've told you already, slowly in the quiet of much sleep and still night when you're allowed to taste bitterness in the full, alone. (Usually, alone.) And he didn't say anything as he waited for me to fall asleep again. I get the feeling nowadays he didn't fall back to dreaming along with me.

Fiercely.

Uncompromisingly fierce.

I know from how I feel that they loved me this much, because that is how hard I love them back. Even though...

And something in me knows the love I have with this man is the same.

-o-

**IV.**

I knew-the moment we locked eyes in my eighteenth year of life, that summer, I knew. But you should know all about that already.


	3. Momentous

3. Momentous  
CAL

**I.  
****Response**

Know about it? I've heard it, and here I am to write about it.

-o-

**II.  
****Calling**

It was akin to an earthquake, the moment it happened, in the library. The look of love in his eyes instantly lit a fire of the deepest affection, and of passion, in her heart.

Here was a man who had, before then, been so successful at resisting the dangerous charms of erotic-romantic attachments. A man suddenly sitting there with his jaw completely slack and face aflame. It proved too much for her.

It was, for all intents and purposes, a direct hit. If it weren't for the presence of others, the chemistry that exploded right then might have found them very shortly frisking right then and there, what with the combination of Doon, with his heretofore innocently-borne, precipitously good looks and newly-awakened sexual appetites, and Lina, with her natural amenability to the ferocity of love, and that tenor, particular to her expression and her emotions, of truly surprising profundity-the kind that spreads warmth to who ever is near.

To be brief, they quite simply ate each other up, in that first look. The electricity, they would tell you, was 'enormous.'

What happened afterwards-after that seismic millisecond-was this:

He stood up. He took the tips of his fingers from the tabletop and gracefully, slowly, and-the important part-silently took his jacket off the back of the chair and put it on. He looked at her, stood at attention, as she watched him, seemingly staring at him from within a dream state. After a moment she managed to realize she had to do something and cleared her throat, thought quickly, and gathered up all her things. Soon she was half-sprinting down the hall, intent on getting home, the man following right behind. And the rest, I guess, is history... of a kind.

Definitely _my_ history, if you get my drift.

Sometimes life is simple like that. A moment, and who you want to live your life with is (pretty much) decided. Some things sneak up on you that way. Momentous things. And I find it inspiring.

**III.  
****Dad**

How about you?


	4. Loris H

4. Loris H.  
DOON

**I.**

I'm not a person who's easy to get down on his knees.

Not since I was small. That's how long it's been since I've been truly knee-deep in my own vulnerability. Always there's been a weight, ever since I could remember, in my heart telling me never to let people get to me. Not the bullying (silly) classmates in primary school, the Tick Hasslers of the world, the offendingly piggish people that crop up in public life every now and then, not even the depression-the Beast-that rose up in the wake of my mother's death to eat at the very soul of my father, a young man then. Not even that.

But somehow, whenever I have needed someone, Lina has always been there. All. Ways.

These are the moments, when I appreciate her the most, when I'm that frustrated rebellious kid who got a crappy Assignment, when I'm that friend at the end of his rope about something or other, when I'm that man who's suddenly found a capacity to love a woman but no one to direct it to, and...

And that one other time.

-o-

**II.**  
**"That Time"**

_They decide to do a mass funeral, for the victims of the sudden epidemic-with notable exceptions. They don't announce it just then, to keep everyone at the meeting as at-peace as possible. They stick to basic details, the time and place and the condolences. They direct us to leave, direct us to take the next day as an official holiday, and direct us to check the boards the next day to see whose deaths will be marked with a special village affair, just for them._

_I wake the next day. (Don't remember getting home). And do as they direct. I find the announcement and read my father's name; he's one of them, the special ones. And I know I will now have to say a word about him, to..._ explain _him. What he was like. I can't imagine how._

_But somehow having something to do is putting at ease that dry itch my throat, the ferocious burning between my eyes, and I start to head somewhere to work on it-home-and am surprised to find myself at another place altogether._

_Hers._

_-o-_

**III.**

Looking back on it now I don't think I've ever had as long a conversation in my life. Lina, Mrs. Murdo (who was so close to Father to the last moment), and I sat there in their living room for hours and hours, talking, with only a quick break for myself to rest, and to write. It was midnight before I had the draft of the speech done, and it was a pleasant surprise to see Lina had stayed up-waiting in her room, staying away deliberately it seemed-when she came into the room, quiet as anything, just before the hour tolled. She waited until I told her it was done, watching me work, joking every now and then, ignoring looking straight at my raw, red eyes. Afterwards, we talked. And this was no slow-paced chat to reminisce; we sat there, ribbing and teasing one another with senseless comments and pointless observations about random things that had happened the past day, all at a faster and chattier and faster pace until I found myself exhausted. But I was happy. It got to the point where the obvious come to both our minds.

_'Why don't I get a drink for us?'_ she said, grinning.

_'Why not,'_ I grinned back.

A few hours later, we woke up lying naked in her garden shed, heads and various other body parts just _pounding._

_'Good morning_,_'_ I croaked to her, seeing her sit up.

_'God... Doon..._' she groaned.

'_I don't remember anything either,'_ I said.

And laughed quietly. Happily, I think.

-o-

**IV.**

We went away to stay at my place to wait out the coming day, both our minds too restless to sleep and livers too tender to chat much, both just looking out at the window. She stared, silent but smiling, when day came, her hair a crackling halo.

Touched my shoulder.

The last thing I remember seeing before the grief blinded me once more, knocking me out as soon as it was done with me.

God, I miss him. Even now.


	5. Pacific

5. Pacific - Final Chapter  
DOON

**V. (cont'd. fr. ch. 4)  
****Pacific**

Our hands were locked together when I awoke later that day, the orange sun almost spent. Dark coming on again. I trembled a little at the thought, like I always do when I'm by myself, remembering.

And she was there, asleep, chest rising like a buoy in a pacific sea.

Lina.

I looked at her then, and I wondered where she might have been on any one of my quiet days in Sparks, what roads she had blazed past, paths hiked down and mountains scaled up, the seas and the skies and the towns full of people her eyes would have alighted on.

I thought with a little flush who she might have gained in the space between her arms, held in between her knees, had couched between her breasts, kissed. My fingers twitched. They were at her face.

Lina.

Of all the things I'd ever been scared of losing. I dreamt the most about her, fantasized about her the most because I knew she was the girl who'd be hardest to pin down, for anybody. But especially for me. I knew it, the truth of it was sitting in my throat, tearing at it, inflaming it like a stuck bone, and I hated it. Because-

She stirred awake, eyes opening lightly, lips moving gently, opening small, still unaware where she might be exactly. Nostrils flared. I touched her neck and leaned close, finished the thought with my eyes closed.

'_I love you_,' I said. It was the first time I'd ever said it.

She stiffened underneath me, skin warming considerably. I didn't do anything, just kept sitting there, breathing, a little awkward, a little angry, and not a bit hard.

'_Damnit, Doon_,' she growled before sitting up and displacing me from my seat; forced me to sit up next to her. _'What's going on?_' She looked me in the eye, hard. And I stared back, just as hard, long, until my eyebrows sagged, and the bone in my throat trembled, broke up to nothing. _'I don't know,_' I said.

'_I've been wondering,'_ I continued, forcing myself to let it out, _'Where... Who... What-' _No, that wasn't right. _'Who you've done..._' The sentence deflates as I speak it. I don't ever want to have a conversation like this again. Ever.

Funny, but she only looks away then, and she isn't smiling or frowning or anything. She said, '_You probably already know like half of them, Doon. There aren't too many. I don't... Nobody makes mistakes, you know that. It's for the good of the census, how we divide the harvest, first of all... And for our time and our effort-_'

'_It's not worth getting in over your head, I get it,' _I supplied. Still shaken up, still stiff. Still hard.

'_What you're asking, I don't mind, but why do you look so hurt._' She was still all monotone, but her face radiated confusion, calm as it looked, and I felt sorry all of a sudden, couldn't answer. _'Doon...'_

'_I'm not jealous of you. I just-_' I shrugged my shoulders. A sigh came out of me, involuntarily. _'I don't understand it either..._'

She took me in between her hands, and she was all tension, eyes harder than I was. A thrill and a fear went through me in a nanosecond, left me cold and dizzy. Her hands were dry.

In a matter of minutes she had me smeared all over my blankets, and she was sweating, but her eyes remained solidly opaque as she rested on her haunches, watching me shake off the orgasm. She gave me another one as she forced me to lie back and watch her dip her fingers inside of herself and delve, whipping the crown of her sex into a frenzy as she bucked to the rhythm of her soft, squeaking moans. Repeating my name, repeating, repeating like the echo of a wild thing in my worst nightmares, and she came as soon as I jumped up and bit her collar and wrapped her in my arms. And I came with my cock jammed, stuck between her angry thighs. We were wetter than anything, soaked in sweat by the time we finished each other off a second time, together, this time with my penis sheathed in her stuttering purse of rough warm folds of flesh, rocking against the deep of her vagina, shuddering, shuddering. Two of her fingers thrusting up into my mouth as I thrusted my third leg inside of her, we came like that, like two fools at the end of the world who didn't know what armageddon was coming, and I broke down as soon the earthquake roiled off my back, crying into her beautiful chest. Snot and tears and sobbing, the works. She trembled harder than I'd ever have expected of her, and I knew I loved her. I loved her.

That was why. That was it.

She unstuck us an eternity of tears later, when dark had settled in, but the moon peeked in on us from behind a veil of shredded cloud, and we stared back at it, hand in sweaty hand. We had survived my first declaration. I loved her, and she knew it. A little too well, now.

'_I'm sorry.'_

'_Doon... You're so adorable.'_

I looked towards her, and she was grinning. I found myself smiling, sighing involuntarily again.

And I said, simply, _'I'll always love you, you know.' _She just gripped my perspiring hand even tighter, held her silence close.

I blinked, closed my eyes, and I didn't sleep again till her snores sounded softly below me.

**VI.  
****So that's pretty much when I knew.**

It's nice to remember. Thanks.

Now go leave us alone!


	6. Afterword

_Hi, hi,_

_This is Signe Maris, the girl who created this crazy thing (crazy indeed! eep!). Thanks for reading, if you're reading, random anonymous stranger on the internet. If you'd like to take your anonymity another step and leave me a scathing review and flame the hell out of this, rest assured I will take it very badly and will be deeply affected (TROLLS ONOES)._

_Or!_

_If you'd like to help out with a review, or to send over a bit of criticism, that would warm my cockles very well._

_Either way, thanks for reading. All the best for the new year of 2014, and let's all strive to build strong, renewing and mature relationships with everyone we love, including but not limited to your either very awesome (or very non-existent) superhot significant other (who is most definitely going to exist one day)!_

_Good luck! And cheers,_

_SMC_

**It's Nice to Remember: An Interview with Lina M. and Doon H., Heroes of Ember-by Cal Saunders**

DxL - 5 chapters - [Implied and explicit sex: Mature-read at your discretion] - 'I knew-the moment we locked eyes in my eighteenth year of life, that summer, I knew.' - A son asks to weave the history of a very special coupling via 'literary interview.' This is the product. - COMPLETE!

Copyright (characters, setting, and past events): Jeanne DuPrau, author of 'The City of Ember,' 'The People of Sparks,' ''The Diamond of Darkhold,' and 'The Prophet of Yonwood.'


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